Senior Prom
by leaptad
Summary: A character study of the relationship between Charlie and his mother. Set during Don and Charlie's senior year of high school.


Sylvia Eppes pulled out of the driveway and onto the street. Beside her sat her 13-year-old son, Charlie, his nose buried in To Kill a Mockingbird.

"What page is Don on?" Charlie asked, without looking up. Sylvia deeply regretted her comment of the day before. Charlie had been dawdling on his English assignment, concentrating instead on working ahead in his math book. So she had used the only needle that she knew would work. She had told him his brother was 100 pages ahead of him in the book.

Charlie's brother, Don, was 5 years older than him, but they were in the same grade in school. Charlie was, by all standards, a genius. His intellect rivaled some of the greatest thinkers of all times. And the person he worshipped and adored above all others was his brother Don. She had only meant the remark as an incentive for him to concentrate harder on his humanities courses, but it had the undesired effect of pitting the brothers against each other.

"Charlie, it doesn't matter. Please just worry about your own work," she said gently.

Charlie looked up from his book and out the window. He seemed so small and so fragile to her. She wondered again if this was all a bad idea. She suddenly didn't really want to reach their destination. But she had to get him out of the house for a couple of hours. She had to spare him what was really going on there.

The Eppes family had settled into a kind of routine, bizarre as it may have seemed to the outside world. On an ordinary day, Don would run downstairs, wolf down two or three bowls of cereal, and then dash off to school. His days were filled with sports and girls and friends and parties. Charlie, on the other hand, lingered over breakfast. She and Charlie always ate together and then she would drive him to school, pick him up around lunchtime, they would eat lunch together, and then she would take him to his private tutors for the rest of the day. Even being 13 and a senior in high school had proved not quite enough challenge for Charlie's staggering intellect.

But today was not an ordinary today. Today was the Senior Prom. Don was going. Charlie wasn't. Sylvia was trying to shield her son as much as possible from all of the hustle and bustle, the excitement and anticipation that he was missing. She didn't want Charlie to open the fridge and see a corsage cooling there. She didn't want Charlie to see the tux hanging in Don's room. She didn't want him to watch his father loading the film into the camera, and see Don wash his car. She knew she couldn't keep this from him, but perhaps she keep from feeling so acutely the hurt of being what he was. Different from everyone else.

She had thought briefly about taking Charlie to the prom herself. Buying something nice and motherly and dancing with him. But Alan had forbidden it. It was the only time in their almost 20-year marriage that the word "forbid" had escaped his lips. And so she had conceded. She realized he was right. The detrimental emotional effects of attending the prom with his mother were much worse than those of not attending at all.

She ran a hand over her son's head and tugged affectionately on his dark curls. "You need a haircut. Your hair's too long."

"Mom," he complained, pushing away her hand. "This is how I like it."

"Here we are," she said. "California Institute of Science." She pulled into a visitor's parking lot. She turned to face her son and put a big smile on her face. "You got in, sweety. This is where you'll be going next year."

Charlie's smile mimicked her own. "Cool! Can we look around?"

"Yes we can," she said and got out. She kept smiling, but didn't feel like it at all. In fact her stomach was in knots. What on Earth was a 13 year old boy going to do in college? It was a highly intellectual school, to be certain, but still. He would be here with students in their late teens. Students who swore and drank and had sex. She imagined that those things went on in high school as well, but it was easier for her to dismiss those fears somehow. She told herself over and over that once he graduated and became a professor, his students would be almost the same age as him. And then it would be all right. Then he would be able to do all the things that normal students did.

She was not denying his youth, simply delaying it for a while. That was the thought that she pushed to the front of her mind every night before she went to sleep. She figured that if she did it enough, one day she would actually believe it. Or at least find a way to make it true.

She led Charlie up the steps towards the math annex. "Where's Don going to school?" he asked, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"UCLA, probably," she answered.

"Is he going to live in the dorm?"

"Oh, no. He'll be living at home. We'll all be living together, just like now. Won't that be nice?" She didn't mention that the reason Don would be living at home is because the financial strain was just too much. They simply couldn't afford two tuitions plus room and board for Don. Even though Charlie would be receiving an academic scholarship, they owed so much on his private tutors.

She cringed remembering having to tell Don that he couldn't move into the dorm. He was whisking through the kitchen, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, a basketball tucked under his arm. "Don, honey, I need to talk to you," she said as he paused in front of the fridge.

"Let me guess," he said, not looking up. "Fantastic, wonderful, perfect Charlie needs something so I do without. Right?"

She didn't know how to react to his ire.

"Well?" he said, impatiently, opening the bottle of Gatorade he had just retrieved.

She spat it out all at once, hoping to rid herself of the words. "We can't afford to put you up in a dorm. You'll have to live at home next year."

"Terrific," he answered, banging the back door as he exited. She heard him get in his car and drive down the street. The next moment had been the quietest and loneliest of her life. This was why she made Alan handle almost all dealings with Don. Her oldest son could break her heart much too easily.

But that was in the past. The recent past, true, but the past none-the-less. Charlie walked quickly along on the campus grounds. "It's pretty here," he said.

"Yes, very nice. It will be beautiful in the fall. All of the colors on the trees."

They walked in silence, Charlie shuffling his arms the way he did when he wanted to say something to her. "Out with it," she finally said with a knowing smile.

He smiled shyly. "Mom, you're not gonna drive me to school once I'm in college, are you?"

"How else are you planning on getting here?" she asked.

"It's pretty close to home. I could just ride my bike."

Sylvia started to object, but it wasn't a bad idea at all, actually. Don was so active athletically that she didn't worry about him physically. Charlie was another story. He was muscular and slender now, but she could see how years of sitting in an office could affect him. Make him soft and heavy. A 2-mile bike ride each direction could certainly do wonders for one's cardiovascular fitness. Plus, he might actually meet someone on the way to and from school, away from her watchful eyes. A boy his own age, perhaps. Someone to get into a little trouble with. Not much trouble, just a little. Or even a girl. Someone pretty and sweet and young. Someone who could distract a budding genius away from his work... she resolved to follow him, at a discreet distance, in her car for at least the first couple of days.

Hovering. That was Alan's word for it. "Syl, you're hovering," he would say, putting both his hands on her shoulders.

"But, but..." she would try to defend herself, but her excuses were always so pathetic. "He's talking to someone!" was a classic, and often repeated by Alan to put her in her place. The "someone" turned out to be a young girl looking for Don's phone number. Then there was, "He's listening to rock and roll!" She had instituted a strict policy that only classical music be played in Charlie's presence, a rule she was sure was disobeyed with some regularity.

"No one ever got stupid listening to the Beatles," Alan had said, leading her away from the doorway to Charlie's room.

"No one listens to the Beatles anymore," she said, bristling.

"Whatever," Alan said, leading her to their bedroom.

Charlie had stopped in front of a classroom. "Mom, look!" he said in an exaggerated whisper. She looked through the window in the door. There was a young man standing there, headphones on, intensely scribbling equations on the board. His entire body vibrated with concentration and raw energy. "Wow," Charlie said wistfully. "You think that'll be me someday?" he asked as she pulled him down the dark hallway.

"I don't see why not," she said. "But you'll need a box to reach the top of the blackboard."

"Mom!" he said, embarrassed by her teasing even though no one was around on a Saturday. "Statistically, I'm due for a growth spurt any day now. I'm gonna be taller than Don, I bet. You'll see."

She slid an arm around her son. "Come on, sweety. We have to get home."

"How come?"

"I want to get some pictures of your brother and his girlfriend all dressed up."

"Mom," he said, hesitantly. "Am I ever gonna have a girlfriend?" he asked, looking up at her. His little face was so full of hope. She prayed that one day he would learn to hide his emotions, to not let people read his every thought in his eyes.

"Sure you will, sweety. Someday. Just don't forget about your old mom when you do, okay?"

"I could never forget about you, mom. You're my best friend."

It was the saddest, and truest thing he would ever say to her.


End file.
